Career in Desktop Support

Hey Folks, just lookin to poll here and see if anyone here has made a career out of Desktop Support / Helpdesk type work - this does not involve server administration or networking but strictly desktops and managing "AD/Exchange/Applications"

I'm only asking because I'm to a point in my career where I'm "out of options" I guess. I have no ambition to continue a career in Networking or Telephony and want to go back to "fixing the box" - I'm however really afraid of being used and abused by employers and getting paid ****

One of my last roles before going into NOC type work - was a typical helpdesk but I had a lot of interaction with AD writing LDAP scripts and creating packages in altiris and scripting out enterprise-wide installations and patches.

I'd like to go back to that.

I was also thinking about certs and I could easily pass ICND1 but maybe Network+ would look better for these types of roles? I figuring like CCENT/MCP or something along those lines I honestly dont feel like the CCNA (i really have no interest beyond the basics)

Whats everyone's opinions?

Find more posts tagged with

Free for TechExams community: Cybersecurity salary guide

Compare cert salaries and plan your next career move

Button

Comments

jfitzg

no cert alone is going to make you break 50k in this town, its all about experience. Some people like certs, most others dont even know WTF the A+ is. Are you currently working on your GED or are you going to wait until you get another job before you tackle that?

drkat

waiting after I get another job. I mean I definitely have the experience part. I'm just not sure what needs to be done on my resume.

Is the format off? what am I missing

ptilsen

Okay, some tips.

First, don't use first-person tense. No I or me. Even if listing non-technical skills sentence or sentence-like structure, do some kind of list that's easy to view.

Some of the skills mentioned up there are worth adding. Do your skills in some sort of table format, preferably with hidden gridlines. Cram as much relevant stuff as you can without being ridiculous. Consider having multiple versions based on the type of job you're applying to. I wouldn't even look at someone for a desktop support position that had "Troubleshooting and Testing of T-Carrier Circuits, Frame-Relay, and DSL, MPLS" because that indicates to me the candidate is in a different career track and probably didn't even mean to apply for a DST job. In the same line, I wouldn't put so many specific systems and technologies on a "general" resume.

If you do make specialized resume versions, feel free to add even more specific products and technologies. "Exchange 2003-2010" is better than just Exchange.

In your experience section, focus more on job roles than duties. Your descriptions for the most part are straightforward and do a decent job of conveying what you did, but I don't have any concept that you were a valued employee who contributed to the business.

Formatting is a big deal. Honestly, I can't find too much to nit-pick about on your resume other than the total lack of good formatting. Tables with hidden grids go a long way. Google some sample resumes and copy/paste, even use a template. You either need to condense it all to one page or stretch it out to two. Your listed experience makes it kind of hard to pick. On the one hand. you have enough content to fit two pages due to having so many contract jobs in different sectors. On the other hand, you have no credentials (certifications or education) to speak of and less than ten years of professional experience. Weighing it carefully, I would probably get it to all fit on one page. It's a misconception that two-page resumes are inherently bad, but you have to be able really make the most of those two pages.

As far as your career itself goes, everything you've said indicates you should leave Rochester. If the IT market is truly as bad as you say, then get out of there.

There's fun to be had in just about every track of IT, but you do need to try to stick with something to maintain gainful employment. That said, your wide variety of experience and skills would be highly appreciated at an MSP or consulting firm. That should absolutely be the segment you target, in my opinion. I think it would be conducive to your personality, to an extent, and very well suited to your skills and experience. And to be frank, an MSP is more likely to overlook -- or neglect -- your lack of a high school diploma. You still deal with external customers, but as a consultant they're paying for your skill and your opinion -- it's not generally the adversarial role you'll have in other verticals.

I really have to say that the lack of a diploma hurts a lot. I won't claim that you need any college degree to do well in this industry, and most college degrees are barely relevant. But, not having a diploma or even GED will disqualify you from so many positions, regardless of your experience and skills. You have to get the GED out of the way.

drkat

Could you explain more on the roles vs responsibilities? also I guess how do I focus on my network stuff without including the desktop stuff? since the desktop stuff makes up the bulk of my experience? Or should I summarize it and come in as entry level in networking. hows something like this? this is an old formatted one I used

ptilsen

Making some great progress with the formatting.

What I'm getting at is that your resume should indicate how you brought value to a given employer. "Provided efficient Exchange management through custom Powershell scripts" highlights both technical skill and proving great value to the organization. "Proactively managed production servers to ensure high availability of critical systems" is better than "responsible for management and maintenance of servers", which is already much better than simply "server administration". "Designed and implemented image deployment strategies to provide cost-effective workstation management" would be a big improvement of "Desktop imaging".

Not every line item has to illustrate some great success, but certainly being more descriptive is a must. "Wrote Altiris Scripts using Windows Scripting Host and Batch for Software Deployment and Desktop Administration" is much better than "Printer support". Anyone who actually reads your resume will appreciate the difference. Someone just going down a sort of checklist can still see what you've done, so being descriptive won't hurt. "Resolved hardware and software issues with network and desktop printers" doesn't tell a tale of great success, but it's an improvement over "Printer Support".

A mixture of more descriptive and more narrative experience descriptions will make your resume sell you, instead of just meeting checklist requirements. Also, you probably don't want your resume to be a literal check list; I would recommend bullet points over check marks.

Your Tek Systems block at the bottom is definitely the way to go to combine short-term jobs. I still might do individual entries for jobs that really stand-out, but having a larger block of employed time like that looks better to the recruiter or HR manager who isn't paying close attention and might otherwise confuse contract jobs for job hopping. More importantly, it lets you condense the resume to one page and provide a concise, yet detailed list of experiences.

N2IT

drkat

Love how you are building structure with word tables. Smart man

drkat

I'll continue working on this today and re-post later - thanks pt

N2 - trying brother.. trying lol

drkat

Ok here is the revised version! let me know.

please ignore the extra spacing in the bottom table - it is only due to me taking out the personal information.

Thanks!

ptilsen

Looks good, but where did the skills go? Are you still working on those?

drkat

Nope, looks like i deleted them on accident..

here's the actual - sorry guys lol

please let me know if I should do anything else with it. I think its a vast improvement

ptilsen

That looks pretty good, but we'll want to keep the experience descriptions' use of resume real estate reasonable.

"Successfully developed and deployed scripting solutions using Power Shell and Perl to automate departmental tasks including but not limited to domain account and mailbox administration, custom LDAP reporting, and desktop patching" is a lot to read. Removing four or five words would make it reasonable. "Successfully" isn't needed, "custom" can probably go, and "including but not limited to" can be replaced by "such as".

"Developed and deployed PowerShell and Perl scripting solutions to automate departmental tasks such as account and mailbox administration, LDAP reporting, and desktop patching" should convey the same meaning and get it into two lines.

Little improvements like that will help, but otherwise I like what you have going here. I only see two real issues remaining.

First, the lack of content under the "Consultant" entry is a problem. It's fair to condense that so you can really focus on your more recent experience, which is probably more value. However, you did a lot in that time frame and two short lines doesn't do it justice.

Second, you do need to maintain tense consistency between experience descriptions. They should all be past tense. "on-boarding" becomes "on-boarded" , "QoS design and implementation" becomes "Designed and implemented QoS solutions".

NightShade1

I have not read all the comments, actually i just read the first post heh, but i can tell you that you should not do that... there is no money in desktop support.. none... desktop support its where you might start but you dont make a career of it...
If you really dont care about the money and how you live then okay go for desktop support career

Just my 2 cents..

drkat

lets try this again - now I condensed WAN (frame, atm, t1) into WAN Networking
was this a smart move?

GeeLo

Hey Hi

Desktop support / help desk support varies on the the level / tier.. and even the level / tier depends on interpretation.
From what your resume looks like.. it seems you have worked in a lot of the major fields of support desktop / laptop, LAN / WAN., scripting and VoIP. To me.. your more of a level / tier 3 and 4 help desk support. A lot of places will "commonly" pay around 45,000 a year.. that's too low for you.. that's like a Level / Tier 1 or 2 support desk. Level / tier 3 and 4 help desk support which you are, average is around 65,000. Top range, is 80,000 to 90,000.. (which I have seen jobs posted in that range) which in my option, "should be" the average.

It also may be a good idea, to put somewhere in the very beginning of your resume:
Objective: Looking to utilize my expertise as an IT Specialist working in cross IT fields of customer service, technical support, network administration and project deployment for the upwards progress of the organization.

I'm not around much, but I am around, for the next two days.. feel free to PM, if needed.

- Geelo

drkat

Thanks.. I wish there was a "level 3" support role in my area paying $60K lol.

drkat

Welp I did it folks.

Job offered and taken - hourly and in the 50k+ mark.

N2IT

drkat wrote: »

Welp I did it folks.

Job offered and taken - hourly and in the 50k+ mark.

Awesome work!

ptilsen

drkat wrote: »

Welp I did it folks.

Job offered and taken - hourly and in the 50k+ mark.

Way to go! What's the job and what did the final resume look like?

drkat

The job is in telecom - for a services provider - racking/stacking/configuring routers/switches etc - phones, sbc, sip all the areas I work in. They're gonna pay for certification and raises based upon cert level yada yada. Final resume actually ... was the OLD original one - but I've gotten some calls on the last posted one.

Start in a week ... lol time to study for the ccna lol

N2IT

drkat wrote: »

The job is in telecom - for a services provider - racking/stacking/configuring routers/switches etc - phones, sbc, sip all the areas I work in. They're gonna pay for certification and raises based upon cert level yada yada. Final resume actually ... was the OLD original one - but I've gotten some calls on the last posted one.

Start in a week ... lol time to study for the ccna lol

Awesome!

You'll kill the CCNA, Citrix, CWNA whatever cert you study for. You have a lot of real world experience!

drkat

Hey man thanks a lot! I appreciate all the feed back and I will keep folks up to date